Betty Friedan

Blogger has been down for most of the day and Saturday is a slow news day normally.

I started to post another article about the budget and the harm it will do but I think we've covered that for now.

The article linked in the title was almost buried on my Yahoo front page and I haven't watched any news today. Betty F. was our heroine way back when. She wasn't always right about everything and admitted it in later years but she spearheaded the women's movement. We all had our dogeared copies of The Feminine Mystique.

She wrote the book in 1963, one year before Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Everything changed then, accidentally. One of the more reactionary southerners, I don't remember now which one, added women to the Act at the last minute, partly as a joke and partly to ensure its defeat. Johnson had his faults but nobody pushed him around. The Act passed.

I applied for my first office job with the phone company in the very early 60's. I had two babies then. I passed the tests and the physical, and then was told they wouldn't hire me unless I had either my mother or mother-in-law caring for the kids. No job. I rejoiced in later years when they were sued and lost. What goes around comes around.

Every job application I filled out asked about marital status, kids, and some even asked about birth control. Did I plan to have more kids? Some wouldn't hire women of child bearing age unless we could show proof of tubal ligation or hysterectomy. Some wouldn't hire married women. I guess they thought only married women ever became pregnant. Was I qualified? Some didn't even bother to ask. Am I still angry all these years later? Yes, of course I am. No, I'm not making this up as I go along. And this was San Francisco, not Mississippi.

I finally found a job through a friend of my mother's who hired me on faith as a statistical typist. I learned every clerical job in the office except secretary (see below) and improved on a lot of them. It didn't matter. Men were hired for supervisory positions. We women trained them. Men could go to the local coffee shop on their breaks. We women were consigned to the office break area. Sexual harassment and intimidation were the rule rather than the exception, of course. I could go on but you get the idea. Oh. Clothing. Many women were still wearing hat and gloves to work. Dresses and heels of course. Anything to slow us down.

I had sense enough to not mention shorthand on a job application. I knew I never wanted to be a secretary. I saw what they did back then. They were galley slaves, at least to me. I used my shorthand for grocery lists. Statistical typists were uncommon enough that after that first job, I had very few problems actually finding work and I always tried to stay on the accounting/bookkeeping side. I never told anyone until I was hired in San Francisco by the company where I worked for the last 15 years before I retired. My boss was desperate for help, he didn't trust dictaphones, and I took pity. My Gregg was very rusty but he was patient and I had a good memory and knew his writing style. He understood completely why I had never mentioned it.

I lived in Arkansas from 1970 to 1978, another one of my politically active spurts. I was part of the early days of ACORN which started there on a shoestring as well as active in the League of Women Voters. We worked very hard for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment there. Of course we failed. Two consecutive governors, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (and their wives), endorsed it but the State Legislature, composed at that time of mostly old, white, males didn't want to hear it. Phyllis Schlaffly received a warm reception from them with her talk about the draft and uni-sex bathrooms. I don't know about you, but I have two uni-sex bathrooms in my house. That's why the lock was invented. They just couldn't see it..

Betty Friedan opened up a new way of thinking for us with her talk about choices. We didn't know we had any. She remained active in the women's movement for years in one way or another. She wasn't perfect (who is) but those of us who were young women in the 60's and early 70's owe her a debt we can never repay. So, for that matter, do the young women of today.